


The Deepest Sea

by pirripipi



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mermaid, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Science Fiction, Slow Burn, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-03-13 07:33:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13565832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirripipi/pseuds/pirripipi
Summary: There’s always been something about the sea that pulled Aaron in. Something that begged him to go farther, to know more.That’s why when he was proposed for the“Deepest Sea”expedition to the Mariana trench he was overjoyed.Now, surrounded by the impenetrable darkness, with something crawling outside the submarine, he is not sure anymore.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Aaron is a marine biologist.  
> Alex has been wandering around in the dark for too long.
> 
> And English is not my first language so keep that in mind. Enjoy!

No signal from the main ship. Has not been for some time now. Not even a buzz on the radio. Not even a light on the sonar.  
Still, everything is operative.

Protocol commands to go back to find signal again. Strongly advises against the risks of a solo mission. He waits.  
Sitting on the only chair at the cramped space of the submarine, captain of his non-existent tripulation, only the eerie silence is there to keep him company  
Protocol has never encounter a situation like this.  
10.994 meters.  
One single cold drop of sweat goes down his nape, his breathing even yet feels suffocating.  
10.994 meters marked the dive depth reader. 10.994 meters, the deepest point on earth. 10.994, when signal got lost, when silence came. The deepest. It shouldn’t be any more to go down, and yet there he was. Going down. Down. _Down._

Water is thicker there, he notices. Black as the vantablack. Exploration lights unable to get through it.  
He misses the Twilight zone, it’s inscrutable darkness that felt like the night sky, a thousand of bioluminescent fishes shining like a thousand stars.  
Not mass of water should absorb light the way this one does. Sucking it straight from the heart, it’s like the lights weren’t even turned on.  
He imagines it curling around the hull, pressing and pressing like a hungry living thing. Crawling through non-existent openings. Dense and sticky. Gripping his feet, up to his legs. Cold and consuming.  
No mass of water should look like this. No water should. No water.

But the lights are turn on keeps saying the monitor. And the engine keeps them going on their programed route down. Down. _Down._

Even as tides that shouldn’t exist shake and spin it. Tides that make everything tremble, every screw about to break, every weld about to give up. Tides that felt like the wake of bigger things. Sharp and blind.

He wonders if they know that he is here.  
If they can feel him. If they can sense him.

_**If they will come for him.** _

He is been going down for so long, not long enough, pressure should have crushed him already. Oxigen should start to lack. His breathing shouldn’t sound so loud in his ears. There shouldn’t be a down. _Down._ Down

Then, a thud. Muffled and sudden. Something crashing against the hull.

Something small and soft, with claws that try desperately to grab into the hull, singing a song of ripped titanium as it tries to get through.  
It doesn’t matter as he keeps going down. Down. Down.

The submarine stabilize, Aaron breaths, the tearing stops. Silence. And then knocks. Knocks but not quite. Tentative at first. Familiar maybe. He ignores them. _Down. **Down**_ **.** There has to be no more down somewhere. It has to be.

He would have not know where down was on his own, _would have know_ , but navigation keeps it’s task durifuly. The submarine’s spatial mechanical compass unfaced by the spinning. Engine only caring about relative angles.

Something tries reaches for him, lost at the back of his mind, knocking. A bucle that gains volume with each passing second. Short, short, long, pause, short, long, long, short, and again. And again. More frantic. More desperate. More scared.

Tides stop, water calms. The knocking silences briefly.

There’s something in front of him. A light that’s not quite a light, and he can’t be sure if his lights are reflecting on it or if it’s something else.  
He can’t tell what it wants but he wants to know.  
He can’t tell what it needs but he wants to provide.  
He need to go there. He needs to go _down, down, **down.**_

The knocking gets out of control, crazy, louder than ever, beating the hull so hard Aaron chair vibrates slightly; a note of true panic on it. Short, short, long, pause, short, long, long, short. Short, short, long, pause, short, long, long, short. “..- .--.” “..- .--.” Up. up.  up.

##  **UP**

The light blinks. Aaron find himself in front of an eye bigger than his submarine, bigger that the main ship, bigger than anything alive science has ever discovered. Too close. Too close.  
It looks at him and he looks at it and there’s intelligence on it, conscience. He feels like it’s glaring at his very soul.  
It knows him. It has seen his kind before, frozen and helpless and petrified. Lost.  
Bloodcurdling panic, and then screams, Aaron’s screams.

The knocking couldn’t be louder, reverberating around the ship like a crying plea. **UP. UP. UP.**

_He throws himself over the control bridge, but his fingers won’t move. An instant. His heart unbeating. The eye observes._

Somehow he makes it, with trembling hands and teary eyes he reprogramates course, engine recalibrates, turns 180º and stops them dead. Then up.

The beast roars on betrayed roar. Swims away and it’s wake spins the submarine like a leaf on a hurricane. Brutal like nothing Aaron has ever lived before. The submarine itself seems to cry and scream. Cameras get lost, robotic arms tore off. Aaron grabs to his chair for dear life, prays that the seatbelt will last. Prays that he’ll make it out of here. Prays and prays.  
The thing outside tries to hold on too. He can hear it bumping and bumping against the hull.

But the navigation system is immutable, it’s direction corrected. And so it bring them up. _up. up._

They get closer to the surface unbearable second by unbearable second. The scratching on the hull not quite as disturbing as the beasts he can’t see but feel. That he may never stop feeling.

When the water around them is void no more, signal comes back to the submarine.  
When the water around them is void no more, he is able to breath again.

The creature seems to notice too, it’s movements less frantic. The darkness around them more welcoming.

He follows strict protocol to get to the surface, for as much as he just wants to get out of it. Adjust the speed each time, waits the stipulated times, keeps an eye on the control tanks. Checks the sonar for things that even if big will never again be big enough.  
It’s grounding, mechanical. Main ship wants to know about his situation. He tells as much as the settling trauma allows him. He doesn’t mentions the creature. Doesn’t want to think about it. Not now, maybe never. It’s noises are gone by the time he gets close to main ship and he silently prays that the thing has just left.

* * *

 

The image of the state of the submarine burns behind his eyes that night, lying in his cot, not quite ready to sleep, no darkness dark enough.

Corroded titanium, ripped and ruined that shouldn’t have resisted the way back and still did. Lights that despite being perfectly functional couldn’t emitir light no more.  
Two millimeters of the windows glass eaten away by some unknown microorganism.

He lost something there, he thinks, as the waves try and fail to hit his porthole. They used to lull him. Annoy him sometimes. But never frighten him. They never felt dangerous.  
A stronger one hits, makes him jump on the cot, and he looks outside. A human head observes him.  
He knows it can see him despite the dark. He knows it knows he has seen it when the hand of a man that’s not quite a man rest against the porthole, a velociraptor like claw tapping once on the glass before it starts cutting it.

Aaron feels panic reach his throat. Cold and choking. There’s a panic button at the side of his bed, just high enough that can’t be pressed accidentally. He slowly moves his hand to it.  
As the glass falls to the ground he presses it.  
As the thing slides to the floor he sits up.

He has no time to think, no time to react. He jumps to the door as fast as he can, no even turning, not moving his eyes from the thing that was now throwing itself at him, wet and cold arms closing around his neck. He goes very still, paralyzed by fear, waiting to be slaughter; but nothing happens.

Nothing moves.

The thing hangs from him, very still, almost desperate, his claws scratching his nape unintentionally

Then he feels it. A single finger that taps on his shoulder.  
Long, pause, short, long.  
Long, pause, short, long.  
Long, pause, short, long.  
“- .-” “- .-” Ta. Ta? Thanks? Thank you. Thank you. _Thank you._

He hears footsteps down the hall, heavy and metallic, and someone opening the door with a bang. The clicking of weapons. But the thing doesn’t move, and he doesn’t move. And no one seems to move as they took in the scene.  
Aaron only realizes then. The thing has no legs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is highly inacurate. I have close to 0 clue about how submarines work so bless wikipedia.
> 
> Despite that, the mechanical compass I talk about does exist except it doesn't work on three dimensions. It's called south-pointing chariot.
> 
> Also "Thank you" on morse code is soooo long and I've been told that "ta" can mean thanks too (?), so that's why I used it.
> 
> If you're interested on the deep sea the second episode of the documentary series The Blue Planet talks a lot about it and it's really interesting + kinda scary.
> 
> I may write a continuation for this (where there's like actual Aaron/Alex interaction ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯)


	2. Chapter 2

_I've been suspended. Eliza says I may have post traumatic stress, and I think she is right._

§§§

It was a hard blow on Aaron.  
After all he has been through It made him feel more like a tool than a person. Used, broken and discarded. Still, he wanted to believe it was for the best. His mind has not been where it should these last few days, much less to be trusted on a laboratory environment

There’s also the thing that has not been making him lose sleep, since way worse things take charge of that, but that has settled as a constant anxiety on the back of his head. 

He calls it _the thing_ , since he hasn’t been able to come with anything better yet. There’s also the fact that to this day, almost four days since the incident, he still doesn’t know how it really looks.

He is certain it was somehow… human. He remembers a pair, just one pair he believes, of strong arms clinging to him. Claws. Human skin. And no legs. Or maybe there were legs hidden under those fat, slippery tentacles that he can recall with more detail than the face of half his crew.  
He has never been a social man.

He is glad to be able to let the rest of the research group deal with that for him. Has not wishes to temp his luck with whatever that thing was that came from down there with him. Together. In what wasn’t, but maybe it was, just void.

§§§

_Eliza says I should go visit. That by making the thing real I'll validate my feelings and I'll give it boundaries. Take away it's all mighty nature. If only she knew that the thing is not what I think all mighty._

§§§

"They are gorgeous." Peggy said in whisper, almost to herself, as they watched the thing move side to side from behind the one sided mirror. They are standing. No more than a feet away from the glass. Alone in the small cramped room.  
At the other side was the bottom of a pool like tank, big enough to host a blue whale if the whale were meant not to move a single muscle. It has no sand. No plants. And not a single dark spot for hiding.  
Aaron thinks that, if he were a fish, it’ll feel like an hospital room.

"They?" Aaron said at the lack of something else.

"They. We don't want to jump into conclusions to soon and you know it's just... It feels wrong to call them an it."

He could understand. It was unsetting in the least. Seeing something so close to human and yet so far.  
It’s less menacing than he thought it would be. Alien, yes. Feral even. And yet… He thinks Eliza was right after all.

“Is it safe to keep it in this one?” He asks to quiet his nervousness.

“It’s the biggest we have.” Peggy sais. “We sealed the top, just in case they tried to go, but all he’s being doing since he came is path like this, side to side. Not eating. Barely resting. We don’t know what to do.”

“Maybe it’s bored”

She sighed like someone that has had this same conversation a thousand times before and a thousand times has come with the same answer.

“We can’t risk building the wrong environment. We are already playing with fire by feeding them. Giving them anything we could think an octopus would eat and hoping they just knew what to pick”

It indeed moved around the tank like you'll expect any octopus to do, leisurely pacing from one side to the other of the mirror. Always looking at itself, never touching.  
It felt like it was looking at them instead.

"It's unnerving, isn't it?" Peggy said holding it's gaze as it moved in front of her. "We weren't meant to be observing them like this, you know, because of the mirror, but they just stare you down like that and it's... Too much."

He nodded even if he didn't knew what she meant. He has not been in front of the thing since that terrible night four days ago and he very much intended to keep it that way.

He notice the electric blue, almost shiny dots on his tentacles kept changing places. Turning on and off like a weird looking christmas tree. It felt like an absent movement. Like tapping your feet or rubbing your fingers. Soothing, somehow.

He is about to go, leave Peggy to finish her watch alone, when the thing is pathing up the mirror again. Slower, looking it’s surface more thoroughly. It stops in front of Aaron, like a second thought, and looks at him right in the eyes, too perfectly to be just a coincidence. They stare at each other. Those sharp brown eyes digging into his soul.  
He understood Peggy then. 

It raises a hand and touches the glass. -.. --. …. - To peggy it sounds like nothing but Aaron knows is much more.

§§§

_Under Washington order no notice of the discoverment has yet left the ship._

_Sometimes I wonder if I should tell them, what I know, what I saw. If that would bring me some peace._

§§§

He is asked to leave after that.

Right after tapping the thing left, like the mirror that kept him entranced for so long wasn't interesting anymore.

He enters his room with an uneasy feeling, a small knot on his throat that accompanies him to bed. Eliza will be disappointed of not seeing him at dinner with the rest of the crew but he has missed enough of those that one more won't make a difference.  
_"Night"_ the thing had said. And he can only phantom what it means. Maybe it was it's way of saying darkness, it's way to tell him that he knows, that he was there too.  
He wonders if he is going through what he is going.

He wakes when the ship is as it's most silent. He can’t deal with silence anymore. Even with this not true silence that falls around him in the death of night.  
The sky is cloudy with no moon to shine.  
He looks at the ceiling. Stays very still until he gets his breath under control and then sighs. He won't be back to sleep soon.

The waves rock his bed and he sees an brownish twinkle from the corner of his eyes. As he turns his head his heart stops beating. He's frozen again under the shadow of a man that is not.  
He wants to scream but just as last time no words can leave his mouth. He knows the thing knows he has seen it, and yet it doesn't move.

Maybe it reads the fear in Aaron's eyes. Maybe it's just curious. But it waits until Aaron's heart decides to work again and in consequence the rest of his limbs. He stands very very slowly. Sits on the bed with his hands folded on his lap and his eyes wide and unblinking. Much like the thing itself.

"Why are you here?" Aaron asks. But it seems like the thing can't understand. He considers.

Taps on his nightside table _"here"_ and gives what he hopes it'll come out as a questioning expression.

The thing mimics him and taps exactly like it did that evening. _"night"_. And then gives Aaron an slightly annoyed look that could easily read as _"I told you I was coming"._

He supposes it did. Aaron is sincerely marveled at its superhuman expressiveness. How despite the layers of needle like teeth and vaguely shiny eyes it still managed to look so human natured.

 _“So what now”_ Aaron thought, as not him nor the thing made any attempt to make the situation move forward.  
He asks.

The thing answers by vaguely, somehow reluctantly, gesturing toward the feet of his bed.  
_"company"_ he asks while stubbornly looking up as if he couldn't be more annoyed for being there.

 _Company._

He was offered to buck up with someone after he came back. Was told that company may be good for his recover, but he couldn't stomach the idea of someone seeing his pain and not understanding. To be in anyone's company and still be alone.

The thing, tho. The thing understood. It went through what Aaron went. It has seen what Aaron has seen and as Aaron, it has survived. 

He taps _"yes"_ and moves his feet to give the thing space. It lais his top half over the mattress, body perpendicular to Aaron's. His other half remains in the floor, tentacles sparred in every direction, and it may be better that way because he can't imagine how they could have fit on the bed. And he didn't know if they were still wet.

He goes to sleep, knowing that if the thing wanted to slaughter him it could easily do so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's the continuation! Now with 10% more Aaron/Alex interation.
> 
> We'll see more of them in the future, tho.

**Author's Note:**

> This is highly inacurate. I have close to 0 clue about how submarines work so bless wikipedia.
> 
> Despite that, the mechanical compass I talk about does exist except it doesn't work on three directions. It's called south-pointing chariot.
> 
> Also "Thank you" on morse code is soooo long and I've been told that "ta" can mean thanks too (?), so that's why I used it.
> 
> If you're interested on the deep sea the second episode of the documentary series The Blue Planet talks a lot about it and it's really interesting + kinda scary.
> 
> I may write a continuation for this (where there's like actual Aaron/Alex interaction ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯)


End file.
